


Drop the Game

by orphan_account



Series: Orphan Black Writing Prompts [5]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 03:49:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2009817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena and Sarah are talented partners in crime, but are they prepared for when one of their marks retaliates?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drop the Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarahcosima](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=sarahcosima).



> Requested by the lovely SarahCosima. I hope this is what you wanted. This story surprised me.  
> It's important to note that the universe is altered. Sarah and Helena were raised together. Rachel is still leader of Dyad. Sarah and Helena sometimes con their clones, but not exclusively. This is done so that the police are not involved, because Dyad covers their tracks.
> 
> "I've been seeing all, I've been seeing your soul  
> Give me things that I wanted to know  
> Tell me things that you've done.  
> ...
> 
> Hush, I said there's more to life than rush  
> Not gonna leave this place with us  
> Drop the game, it's not enough"  
> \--Flume & Chet Faker, "Drop the Game"

“Did you always have these handcuffs, or did you buy them special for me?”

The only response she receives is a plume of gray smoke bellowing in front of her.

Her mark is the meticulously poised silhouette sitting in a chair across from her. The pale moonlight discerns random parts of her from the darkness: a red stiletto from her sleek heels, the blonde strands of her short hair, and a cigarette fixed between her pointer and middle fingers. Her face is blotted into obscurity by the darkness, making it indecipherable from her surroundings; a blank slate framed by blonde hair.

Across the room, an alarm clock angrily flashes the time in red digits, _8:30_.

Helena is late.

Helena is _never_ late.

The woman slides three pictures across the floor to the tip of Sarah’s boot. One photograph is a bird’s eye view of Sarah’s red convertible, the next is a close-up of her license plate, and the last is a mug-shot of her seventeen-year-old self. She stares into the contemptuous eyes of her past self for a moment before kicking the picture away.

“You’ve been digging,” she mutters.

“I’m intrigued by your unique profession, Sarah. Do you make a habit of breaking into your sisters’ homes?”

“You’re not my sister, and yeah, I do what I want.”

“What put me on your radar?” She asks softly. Duncan exercises restraint with a polite and cordial voice, but steel cords inlay her curt questions; it only proves that she was right in thinking Duncan was hiding something. Now all she has to do is bide her time.

“Have you ever been in a bar fight?” She asks, cocking her head. “It doesn’t matter who you’re fighting or even how it started—not when blows start bringing blood.”

She thinks of the bloody knuckles, the gritting bones in her broken nose, the rush of standing in the circle of a crowd. “All that matters is who will win.”

Duncan makes no clear reaction other than to bring the cigarette to her lips; the orange embers burn brighter and illuminate the smirking red lips behind them.

“I understand. I suppose even physical fights can lose their luster and a corporation would be the logical upgrade.” She gestures to the handcuffs, “Do you believe you’re winning?”

Sarah fights to keep smiling as she readjusts her hands under the handcuff’s fierce grip. Helena should have been here by now.

“Well, you can’t call the police without bringing attention to your Dyad group and you aren’t stupid enough to kill me.”

Duncan smothers the cigarette in a silver dish at the table beside her. A slight hissing sound resonates through the room followed by a long silence. Sarah watches a small puff of smoke lazily float from the crumpled cigarette and dissipate into nothing.

“When I spotted your car last week my first impression was that you are sloppy, but I held off because your confidence enthralled me. Clearly I should have trusted my instincts,” she drawls. “You made a mistake by breaking into my home, but worse, you underestimated me.”

She stands up and catches a slanted ray of moonlight across her face. Her eyes are as sharp as a blade. “I’m sick of you already,” she mutters, casting off her pseudo kindness. “We will retire to the basement soon. Would you like a drink?”

Duncan submerges into the surrounding pool of darkness that obscures her image once again. Sarah gives a compulsory scoff as reply and betrays no other expression, but a sizable lump has begun to form in her throat.  

“What are you going to do?”

“You were right to assume that I wouldn’t call the police, although their attention is more inconvenient than anything. However, my position in Dyad allows certain impunity when it comes to disposing of…obstacles. In this case, two orphans who abandoned their foster home to become low-life grifters. Nobody will miss either of you.”

The hairs on the back of her neck stand up as Duncan says knowingly, “Did you think I missed Helena?”

“ _Bullshit_ ,” she spits out as venomously as she can.

“The security camera picked her up a couple minutes before I found you. Daniel’s taking care of her now.”

Helena’s face strikes in her mind suddenly like a bolt from clear sky. Structurally, she is identical to Sarah and the others with a round face, deep-set eyes, and wide lips—but the resemblance ends there. She can vacillate from playful child to ruthless assassin without warning, but her emphatic features are consistent. The violet bags sagging under her eyes, the deep craters of dead skin in her bottom lip, and the cloud of hand-dyed hair never fail to instil fear in a stranger.

Sarah alone can find love and compassion in both the killer and the child.

If anyone but Sarah were to challenge Helena to a fight they would kiss the ground with a mouth full of blood.

“Bullshit,” she says again.

Duncan procures an iPhone from the darkness and the blue screen illuminates her face. After a moment, she turns the screen to Sarah. A picture shows Helena with her hands tied behind her back and blood dripping from her lips. Helena appears to glare at Sarah with dark slits for eyes.

“Daniel told her you were already dead—I hope you don’t mind—it was imperative that he disarm her as quickly as possible and that appeared to be the swiftest route,” she makes a _tsk_ sound at her phone, “Poor thing.”

Heat floods at the back of her eyes and the side of her lip curls into a snarl.

“You wouldn’t,” she says in a low voice.

“Were you two always so close?” Duncan asks, returning the phone to the desk. After a beat of silence, she sighs, “Don’t evade my questions, Sarah. I will know eventually.”

“No.”

“When did that change?”

Her voice sounds from a different part of the room, which causes Sarah to glare at the floor where Duncan last stood. After a minute she tips her head back and sighs. Tears begin to well in her eyes.

“I ran away when I was twelve. She followed me. After that we only had each other,” she mutters with an undeniable tone of bitterness.

Duncan returns with a martini glass full of dazzling clear liquid cupped in one hand. The only perceivable color is the green olive speared by the glass cocktail pick; its stark red eye stares blindly at Sarah from within a sickly green socket.

“When you cast me as the villain you give me no choice but to act like one,” she says. “If you hadn’t stuck your nose where it doesn’t belong, we could have been partners—even friends—I see great potential in you.”

A similar memory unfolds from her mind: _I can see a light in you_.

She hates herself for making a connection between them. Helena had uttered those words in desperation the night Sarah ran away. Helena's reflective eyes peered at her from the darkness, watching as Sarah descended from the window. Half an hour later, those fearful eyes remained burning in her retinas as she paced the bus stop. It was only when she caught Helena looking at her from behind a tree a few yards away that the image faded. Duncan is not Helena. She has half the heart.

With pursed lips, she stares at the ground and says nothing.

Duncan sighs and flicks a switch that creates a spotlight around her. Her short hair creates a fit aureole of gold while her smirking red lips match the shade of her stilettos. _She dressed for the occasion._  

In darkness Duncan had successfully maintained an exterior of cold obligation, but now her excitement is made excruciatingly clear. Her lips have adopted an asymmetrical smile that dimples her left cheek and her eyes are as black as coal. For the first time Sarah recognizes the glint of malevolence she’s found in her sister time and time again.  

“Stand,” she demands, and Sarah obeys.

Panic begins to rim her mind and her thoughts elude her grasp. Her heart feels as though it were caught between two clenched fists.

Duncan’s hand gently guides from the small of her back as she leads them to the basement. She wears an expensive floral fragrance that attacks Sarah’s senses. _Why is she wearing perfume_? When they reach the hallway leading to the basement she nearly passes out from lack of oxygen.

The attack happens so quickly that Sarah can only gasp as she slams against the wall. Her hands swing over her face for protection, but the next hit never comes. Instead, she hears the screeching whine stilettos make against tile and the scream of breaking glass.

Sarah opens her eyes slowly and peeks through the cover of her hands.

Helena crouches over Duncan like a wild animal; her knees have pinned Duncan’s arms at her side and her hands have wrapped around her throat. Her face is masked by the torrent of tangled blonde hair thrashing in the air.

Their voices intertwine in a chorus of screams; a growling contralto and a vibrating soprano, predator and prey.

Sarah strides past them in a daze and grabs the phone on the desk. She holds it firmly between her cuffed hands and stumbles down a flight of stairs until she approaches the basement door, which has been left ajar in preparation for Sarah.

She shoves her foot into the gap, forces the door open, and stands in complete silence.

Horror compresses in her gut as she takes rapid-fire pictures of the room. The walls are padded with soundproof material, the tile floor slants downward to meet a metal drain at the crux, and a small metal cage sits in the far right corner of the room. As she closes the door she catches sight of a padlocked chest made of dark oak in the back of the room. She takes another picture and closes the door.

The hairs on the back of her neck and arms stand on end as she slowly climbs the steps.

She leans against the wall at the top of the flight and stares down at the basement door. A right angle of white light shines out from the doorjamb.

Rachel Duncan was supposed to be an easy mark—chosen for her ridiculous amount of money and obstinately consuming work regime. They had expected to find evidence of swindling, a few bank codes, or even a couple thousand hidden in the crooks and crannies of her home. The plan had gone exactly how they wanted until Duncan came home expecting them.

Finding a torture chamber was not part of the plan.   

Quickly, she converts the phone memory onto the SIM card, takes it out, and fits it into her pocket.

When she re-enters the main room she finds that Helena has grabbed the cocktail pick from the shattered martini glass and closed her mouth around it.

With a hideous sucking sound she removes the green olive and traps it between her teeth so that the red iris stares once again at Sarah. The olive pops with a slight hiss when she clenches her jaw and a stream of juice subsequently runs down her chin.

 Helena looks like a cat pawing at her prey as she directs the cocktail point into Duncan’s left eye.

Sarah pulls Helena off Duncan with difficulty and staggers towards the door. She closes her ears to the blood-curling scream behind them and turns off the light by checking her shoulder against the wall; then she puts her cuffed hands on Helena’s shoulder and forces them both out the door.

The night is crisp and cool when they come barreling out of the apartment. At once Sarah empties her stomach in the gutter. Her cuffed hands lay on the top of the car over her head while she hunches over her knees and spits out the remaining stomach acid.

Helena curls her arms around Sarah and squeezes tight, oblivious to the unease in her stomach. She places wet kisses along the back of her neck.

“You're okay,” she murmurs in a mantra. “You're okay.”

Sarah tries to comfort her sister, knowing that the nature of her repetition is self-comfort, but her mind is still in the apartment. When they had blasted out of the room she had heard a sound that seemed irrelevant at the moment. Now it blares in her ears, reverberating through her brain, and blocking out all other sound.  

The sound rose like smoke in the dark room; it danced in the air, reaching for them, before dissipating into nothing.

Laughter—a wheezing and almost maniacal sound that had bubbled up from her crushed throat, and yet, at the same time, conjoined with knowing eloquence.

The worst part is that Sarah knows they did everything right: there are no fingerprints, Daniel is dead or at least incapacitated, Duncan is partially blind, and she has a SIM card full of condemning evidence.

But Duncan is laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> So I used Rachel's last name for this story only. At first because I was influenced by Steig Larsson but then I started to think about it. I decided that I liked the impersonal touch it gave her. You are only to refer to her as Duncan, or she'll destroy you.


End file.
